Breathing Fire
by teenwaste
Summary: Kojin is a young kitchen scullion in the Earth King's Palace, who by sheer chance finds herself joining Aang, Katara, Toph, and Sokka. How will her story change theirs? OC/Zuko, Tokka, mild Kataang. Semi-AU. Follows third season and beyond.
1. Chapter 1

1892年3月13日

**3 Large Asparagus-Pears**

**AT LEAST 15 raspberrynanas**

**12 ounces of basilweed**

_Later_

Sorry, I was carrying this around in my bag and jotted down some shopping items. Hao offered me five asparagus-pears for the price of three. I ended up having to eat one of them on the train. Rolling fruit experimentally in your palm is, unfortunately, the easiest way to spoil it. So now my mouth has that grainy aftertaste I can't stand.

I have no idea how to cook in the northern style, and neither does Cook Muraki (as if he'd ever let that sake bottle detach itself from his lips) but hey, if I can steal myself away to write in a journal, then I can steal myself away to read a cookbook in the library chambers.

The other day I found a little book—as kid's book, about the spirits. It had the usual: the spirit of the sky, of the water, Wan Chi Tong, _he who knows ten thousand things_, the moon spirit, all of them. I noticed one semi-amusing thing, though: Kojin was listed as the fire spirit. I know Kojin is both the spirit of the kitchen and of the hearth, but it's been a long time since I heard any mention of Kojin being the spirit of fire. The last time someone told me Kojin is the fire spirit was that day I punched an ashy hole into the side of Mr. Fei's courtyard.

Every time I think of that day this horrible surge seems to rush up inside me, threatening to burst out from under my skin. It's like my bones want to free themselves from the confines of my flesh… No, I changed my mind. It's beyond bones. It's something else. It's in my blood. Sometimes it seems to burn holes into my lungs, and I sometimes take these shaky exhales and I swear to the spirits sparks fly off my tongue. That explains the burn marks on some of the pages in the book. Whatever. It doesn't matter.

I lied. I just had to sit in my closet and light tiny fires with my fingers oh spirits I hate myself I hate myself I'm a disgrace.

I've been thinking there's something odd going on in the palace since Long Feng got taken out. What would I know? I only send out the food. _I've_ only ever seen the King in passing. Ha ha, maybe someone's plotting a coup. Something about that "war nobody's meant to know about" but somehow the entire staff is aware. I don't know, maybe I'm luckier than most staff. I doubt the maids get to leave the city to find rare Kiba root for the King's favorite sick soup. Oh, lucky me. I get to breach the walls but I haven't seen my family in nearly ten years.

I wonder what Natsuko looks like now. Is she pretty like Mother? Or ugly like me? It's funny, I looked at myself in the mirror in passing and thought I looked presentable but it was clearly a trick of the light because I looked back, properly, and my qipao was nearly totally open, my breasts tumbling out of the slit like apple-plants out of a basket. And my face was a mess. Ignoring the mess of soy sauce and Mirin that had somehow made it to my cheeks, making me look like a dark, blotchy-skinned demon, my pimples were in such large numbers they might as well have started a tea shop and invited in customers from the First Quarter. Ha-ha. Someday, when I'm far away from Ba Sing Se, I should go into comedy. In any case, I've always hoped that one day I piss off an earthbender enough that he hits me in the face with a rock so hard that at least I have an excuse to look this bad.

It's getting late. I should head to the kitchen. Maybe if it's empty enough I can go through that courtyard with the cypresses, it's such a nice day. The sun is just setting.

_Later_

This diary is all I have. I'm writing with a piece of charcoal. I don't know how I can explain what happened. I'm flying on a beast I've only heard about in stories. I'm with the Avatar. He may be dead. I'm cold. I'm alone. All for now.

AN: Here it is! I'm working on Chap 2 right now, maybe I can get it in tonight or even tomorrow morning. I hope you enjoy.


	2. Chapter 2

My diary, which used to feel like a familiar friend, feels cold in my hands. The leather no longer bears the same warmth, and the pages don't beckon to me like they did back in the palace. But I know I need to write. I feel that same itching in my fingers. I don't know where to start.

"How about a date?" Katara says. She's too kind. She always has been. She healed my ears, slept in the same room as me when dreams of blue lightning, lightning that never touched me, plagued my nights. We stayed up late and laughed, even when it seemed like laughter had been sucked out of the world. And she was right, so right. I always start with a date.

_1892__年__4__月__0__9__日_

_I'm on a ship. It's been a few weeks since my seemingly nondescript last entry. I'm not really sure how to start this entry out. There's so much to say, and my hands still shake. _

"I'm going to go up on deck. Write as much as you need to." I grunt in response, without turning around. I feel bad, but Katara bends my tea just a little bit warmer and shuts the metal door hard behind her.

_I ended by saying that I was going to go through the courtyard to the kitchen. I did. I made a short detour to the food archives to see if I could find anything on Northern style cooking. I didn't, so I kept on walking. I remember the long cypress shadows dwarfing my own, and for the first time in my life feeling smaller than anything. _

_It made me so aware of the blood burning inside of me. _

_I found a cave._

_The burning called to me. I went in. I was wearing my dirty green kitchen qipao and holding nothing but this diary and a bag of fruit. The only trinket from home I still had was the red brooch. I shouldn't be attached to material things but I lost all the letters from Natsuko, from Mother. I lost Mother's gold-trimmed kimono and all the money I ever stole from Muraki. My whole life, tucked in a wooden chest under a bunk in the western servant's quarters in the Earth King's palace in Ba Sing Se. I never called it home but now I think I should have._

_It was so dark. I tripped over stones and ripped my sandals open. It took me so much willpower to not light a fire in my palm. The burning kept surfacing. I breathed sparks like I do when I'm angry. Then I lit a tiny fire at the end of my finger, no larger than the fire at the end of a match. I rolled my sleeve up and kept my arm at a distance, like I was trying to prove to myself that my arm didn't belong to me._

_I thought the crystal catacombs were legend. This, among many other things, was a lie. _

_I reached the catacombs and found chaos. Five very different people were in the throes of an intense fight. There was the brown-skinned girl (she I noticed first), the boy with the blue tattoos, the boy with the burned eye, the old man, and the girl in green. I know now that they are called Katara, Aang, Zuko, Iroh, and Azula. _

_It was so hard to understand what happened. I saw firebenders for the first time in my life. I kept thinking that I wish I'd been trained so I could help, but then that high-pitched cackling voice in my head laughed in my face: "help who?" it asked. And I was soberly reminded of _why_ I had to hide my firebending all my life, _why _I had kept such an integral part of myself secret for so long. _

_The Fire Nation was the enemy. _

I took a long, rattling breath. It felt like I'd kept it in for hours. I put out my candle and lit it again.

_Aang did something incredible (Katara tells me it's called the Avatar State) but Azula shot him down. Then everything went slowly. I helped carry Aang through a passageway to this huge behemoth I thought was the stuff of fairytales. We all sat on the saddle. I rubbed the Avatar's temples with Asparagus-pear meat, feeling my fingertips tingle and hoping his mind would ease. Katara bent water from a vial and pressed it into Aang's back. He was okay. Ba Sing Se, not so much. _

_I fell asleep after that. I woke up right at dawn like I'm used to, feeling oddly weightless. We were flying over desert, towards the coast. I picked up a piece of charcoal from the folds of the Earth King's robes and wrote my last entry. _

_ I spent the last few weeks recovering. Everyone was. Emotionally as well as physically. Aang is still asleep. While I've befriended his whole group, he has no idea who I am or why I'm on this hijacked Fire Nation ship. Hell, I don't even know why I'm here._

I shut my diary. I breathe a little, but it comes out hoarse, ragged. I can feel the sparks smoldering at the back of my throat. I poke my head out of the porthole and exhale. A smallish wave of fire seeps out of my mouth, leaving my lips dry but unharmed. I feel appeased, for now. I slap some water onto my face and head out of the door without looking up at the mirror above the water basin. I haven't looked in a mirror since Ba Sing Se. I don't want to see what I look like.


End file.
